Language is funny. You spend the year throwing around superlatives, describing new features on Facebook or the texture of your new favourite Burrito, and are then totally disarmed when you go somewhere like Yosemite, and faced with things that really are ‘awesome’ (in the base sense of the word), ‘massive’ (as in, unimaginably heavy’?) and ‘amazing’ (oh come on). Without the ability to describe anything in a meaningful way, all you can gawp and try in vain to compare it to other places that you have been, and mostly failing.

Yosemite is ridiculously, completely unnecessarily gorgeous. Like a set from a Star Trek movie (perhaps one of the pleasure planets where people run around in togas and seduce secondary members of crew into a life of endless procreation), there is forever a CGI waterfall in the background and vistas stretching off into the distance.

Four days of unbroken sun above our heads, snow underfoot, and yet weather warm enough for t-shirts was a perfect backdrop for enjoying a birthday with my family. Great food, wonderful company, and an awesome location; literally.